Polish given names

Polish names, always subject to many questions asked by foreign people.
Let's handle the given names this time.

My work in the Netherlands
If you have been working in logistics and warehousing for many years, the chance is pretty big that you worked with Polish people. Since graduating at university I have been working with them.

Next to the fact that they are excellent forktruck drivers, fast and accurate assembly line operators, order pickers, quality controllers (you name it), they are just good company. My motto is that the best is to work hard and make fun hard in this fast moving and hectic environment of logistics. I keep very nice memories to this time.

Nicknames, informal names, short names
So before visiting Poland I already knew most of the nicknames for official names.
I call it nicknames but that does not cover it completely. Calling it their informal name also is not completely right. It's just a short version.

My informal name in the Netherlands is Vince or Vinnie, but you really need to be close to me to use that name. In Poland Katarzyna is Kasia, you can use it pretty quick after getting to know the person. I would not introduce myself as Vinnie; my wife does introduce herself as Kasia in most occasions, not as Katarzyna.

Eastern bloc
These short names are not unique, it is normal in East Europe, Slavic and Balkan countries. I remember working with people from Czech Republic and Slowakia, they also use these short names. Although I believe Poland really is hardcore compared to those other countries.

You can compare it with the thing happening to some male English names, for instance William: Bill, Robert: Bob, Richard: Dick, James: Jim. However, this really is a light version compared to the Polish version, it's just a few.

Examples
A lot of Polish female names have a shorter version, male names also but a bit less. Some of these make perfect sense, some of them a tad less.

A few examples.

Katarzyna: Kasia
Joanna: Asia
Aleksandra: Ola
Arkadiusz: Arek
Andrzej: Jędrek
Sławomir: Sławek

Complicated?
Not really, Poland does not use so many different first names like in the Netherlands. They are more classic and do not invent these ridiculous Dutch new names. Also their use of foreign names is very limited. There are only a few short names which do not have much resemblance with the connected given name.

Beware
Some of the names have even more than one short form, so besides Asia you call a Joanna: Joasia, Asiunia, Asiunia, Aśka or Joaśka (beware, though. A lot of women despise to be called like the last two versions, the ones ending with -ka).

My name
Out of curiosity I checked the Polish equivalent for Vincent, my name.
It is Wincenty, short versions are Wicek or Witek. Well, call me Viniu instead, better. That's how many Polish friends and acquaintances call me. Or Vienio ;-)

Cars in Warsaw 🚘

People who know me personally know that I am not a car guy. Never was and never will be. My previous and last car was an old, golden 1999 Audi A3 TDI, with half a million kilometers on it. Cracks and dents allover, but reliable and comfortable on the motorway during the rides to and from work. More important than shiny rims and other esthetic stuff.

Cars in Warsaw

To date I do not own a car yet, since moving to Warsaw. The public transport system is fine for now. Since moving here I started to notice some really cool cars. From Polski Fiats to foreign supercars.

As time passed I started to care more for the esthetics, some of them were just dead gorgeous. I still do not care so much when owning a car, but do enjoy to see cars which are different from what I was used to in the Netherlands.

Two cars which cannot be left out are Polski Fiats, the 126p and 125p. These were manufactured under licence in Poland and were very popular back then. Poles call them "mały Fiat" (small Fiat) and "duży Fiat" (big Fiat).

Polski Fiat 126p

The smallest of the two, the "mały Fiat."

Many Poles drove this car and you still see these little cult cars driving in the city. This sometimes leads to funny situations as two of these little cars can be parked on one parking spot (If the drivers are no pussies). I have seen it a few times myself and just had to grin when seeing it.

The small Fiat is also popular in city tourism

Polski Fiat 125p

The big brother. Also very popular back then, also as Taxis. Nowadays I occasionally see one on the streets, less than its smaller brother. Also these are being hired to tourists on Parade Square of the Palace Of Culture and science (Plac Defilad).

125p, a newer version produced by FSO

I have seen a few restored ones which looked really cool. Made lower, nice rims, new paintjob and chrome...it did not surprise me that younger generations have nicknamed it "Bandzior" (bandit). 

FSO Polonez
Another Polish gem. Every Polak wanted to own one back in the days. In the background the Polish Linguistic Institute where I study Polish.

FSO Polonez

FSO Syrena

This one I only saw a few times. A true classic car which is super to use for a wedding. 

Production started at FSO in Warsaw in the fifties. Syrena means siren (mermaid), the symbol of the city featuring on the coat of arms. 

FSO Warszawa

The first time I saw it was at a car wash, glued to a wall. Read that again. 

The Warszawa is massive, also a fifties car just like the Syrena. It was the first newly designed car manufactured in Poland after ww2.

Foreign cars

I did not see a lot of classic foreign cars in the city yet. What amazed me is the number of expensive cars like Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, Porsche, high end BMW's and Mercedes types, Jaguars, and so on. I almost forgot to mention the Range Rovers and American muscle cars. I saw (and heard) a lot of 5.0 Mustangs. 

Check out some of the pictures I snapped:

Lamborghini in front of Hotel Bristol

I almost forgot to mention that I did see a lovely foreign classic, the Saab96. My father owned a couple of these, for daily use. Me and my sister hated it back then, but just look at her...isn't she lovely?

After blogging about buses and now cars, I will show you some old school aircrafts soon. Stay tuned!

Frequent flyer

What a time was that, flying 2 or 3 times per month to Warsaw and back. Wizzair, Ryanair, LOT, Eurowings, Eindhoven, Maastricht, Dortmund, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Paderborn, Warsaw Chopin and Warsaw Modlin.

Our calendars...

Variables
Sometimes I needed to book combinaions like: leaving from Eindhoven landing on Warsaw Chopin with Wizzair, back from Warsaw Modlin flying to Cologne with Ryanair. It was a constant hustle between price, availability, flight times, parking, transfers and the most important: my loved ones who could bring me to the airport and were waiting for me in terminals in Germany and the Netherlands. Around midnight.

Mrs My Warsaw Dream

Let's not forget the Mrs, girlfriend back then. I can remember a delayed flight, wrote her that I did not want her to wait for me. Around 2:30 AM we landed in Warsaw.

Guess who was standing there in a desolated terminal...if I remember correctly she even had to work a few hours later. What a woman.

Amazing views
It was always fantastic to arrive in Warsaw, sometimes the last minutes were spectacular.

Warsaw city center. I loved flights during daylight.

Especially when the pilot had to queue and wait for a landing slot, making circles above the city.

And on the return flight back to the Netherlands I said goodbye to the city with this view:

When leaving Warsaw

Pick ups

Of course she also visited me in the Netherlands and I had to pick her up on some Dutch or German airport. These were mostly Fridays, I can remember it was tough after a busy work week. Arrived in Neede around midnight if we were lucky. But the few days together were compensating all the hassle, it gave us energy.

I will never forget this time!

Import and export

I might live in Poland, but there is a solid flow of goods between both countries.  

I just cannot go to my family in the Netherlands and return to Poland without stroopwafels. In Warsaw I have a few stroopwafel addicts. It did not result in a trade embargo yet, but we got close.

Dutch stroopwafels

PL to NL
When travelling to the Netherlands, I always tried to take products from Poland. Cigarettes, Wedel chocolate (see previous blog post), kaszkiet hats (see previous blog post), Bunzlau handmade teapots and other tableware like cups and plates (Bunzlau is Bolesławiec in Polish, a town, like the city Danzig is Gdańsk). Bunzlau products you see a lot in Dutch places where women have a "high tea"; quite expensive buying in the Netherlands. I bought in Polish currency and took it to the Netherlands instead.

Bunzlau

NL to PL
On the way back I was taking cheese, drop (the Dutch liquorice), the stroopwafels which I mentioned before and so called "pindapepsels" for my wife (salty sticks with peanutbutter inside), she loves them. 

In December I always took some of the Dutch products connected to "Sinterklaas" (Saint Nicholas tradition): "Pepernoten", "speculaas" and "gevuld speculaas."

Pepernoten

Speculaasjes

Gevuld speculaas

Hagelslag

I never took "hagelslag" (chocolate sprinkles which the Dutch eat on bread).
I liked it in the Netherlands, but never ate it that much. At the end of the day it is just silly to eat chocolate on bread, there are healthier options.

However, when we married, one of my Dutch pals and his wife gave me this box with mini packages with all kinds of sprinkles. When tasting it felt like I was eating the most delicious food ever. Its taste just had me dream away to my childhood. A small present but I hold good memories to it.

At the moment of writing this I am in the Netherlands for a quick visit and did some shopping today, in fact it brought me to the idea of writing this blog post.

I will have to be creative when packing my trolley for the return flight, but the years of frequent flying gave me a good training. No way that these will not go home!

David Bowie

My previous blog post was about Esperanto and its connection with Warsaw. (Click here if you missed it). I also threw in a teaser about a world famous artist, believed to be a big Esperanto enthusiast.

Yes, it was David Bowie, may his soul rest in peace. In fact there is a story going round which has reached mythical proportions.

Bowie and Warsaw
April 1976, traveling from Zurich to Helsinki via Moscow, his train had a technical break in Warsaw. The story goes that Bowie most likely left the train and took a walk around the city. Back then, Warsaw was under a communist regime, shut behind the Iron Curtain.

Bowie and Iggy Pop

A much mythologised walk,  probably ended in Bowie heading towards Plac Komuny Paryskiej (today Plac Wilsona, Wilson Square). There he bought a vinyl album by Śląsk, a Polish folk ensemble. 

Around a year later, a melodic line and some distorted words from one of that LP’s compositions appeared on Bowie’s break-through album "Low", the song "Warszawa."

Like I mentioned, the lyrics were distorted, weird. Like he was singing in some kind of new language. On Blackstar, his final album, the song "Girl Loves Me" he used Nadsat, the English-Russian slang invented by Anthony Burgess for his novel "A Clockwork Orange". Which is one of my favorite English books by the way.
But this was something totally different. A mix of all kinds of languages with resemblance to Esperanto and the Polish dialect he heard on that LP he bought. The fact that he walked literally a few hundred meters from the place where Esperanto inventor Zamenhoff lived (the Jewish district), makes this myth pretty trustworthy. 

The absorber
Bowie's former manager stated that Bowie was a great absorber of information, a very intelligent man. Some might think it just was just curiosity in combination with LSD or some other hardcore psychedelic substance. Others just think he was a nutcase, one with a nice voice, who totally lost it. Critics said this was the best song on the album, apparently they were on some excellent quality stuff as well...

Bowie himself always answered questions about the song in a very mysterious way, leaving people behind with even more questions than they initially had.

Mural
Opposite to the workplace of my wife, in the Żoliborz district, "Stary Żoliborz" to be precise (Old Żoliborz).
The below mural is painted in a block of appartments. I sometimes pay a visit to her employer and always try to have a quick peek around the corner, very pretty. This is very close to the earlier mentioned Plac Wilsona.

And more recent:

Conclusion
I personally just think he loved Warsaw, was fascinated by Esperanto and his mind was influenced by the LP he bought here. Which is funny because this LP's vocals were in heavy Silesian dialect. An area at the other end of the country. Well I would not be able to distinguish it from the Polish language either after my first visit, fair enough. 

I'm afraid that this myth will always remain after Bowie's passing, but that is what myths are for, right?

Esperanto

Did you know that international language Esperanto was introduced in Warsaw?

Well I did not, my wife told me a few days ago when I noticed a bus with the name Esperanto on the front.

Bus line 107 ESPERANTO

She explained she was hanging out with folks from an Esperanto club in the past, together with her brother. They were no Esperanto enthusiasts but were welcome to join. 

History
Esperanto is a constructed international auxiliary language. With an estimated two million speakers worldwide, it is the most widely spoken constructed language in the world. The Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, Unua Libro, in Warsaw in July 1887. The name of Esperanto derives from Doktoro Esperanto (Esperanto translates as "one who hopes"), the pseudonym under which Zamenhof published Unua Libro.

Warsaw and Esperanto
Warsaw still has various Esperanto clubs. Next to the bus line I also noticed a mural in Warszawa Muranów.

Also, Zamenhof has his own street in this area, 'ulica Zamenhofa.'

As a Pole with a Jewish background, he also features in the Museum of history of Polish Jews. I remember that me and my wife walked through a remake of ulica Zamenhofa in the museum. I did not know when walking through it, but made a photo.
Nice that pieces of the puzzle came together years later.

This area has another nice story behind it, involving a world famous artist. And, the myth says that he also was into Esperanto. 

Curious to know who? Keep an eye on the blog and you will find out :-)

Winnie the Pooh

During one of my walks through Warsaw downtown after attending Polish language classes, I saw this Winnie the Pooh thing on a wall. Above an Anarchy sign. Winnie the anarchist I thought, made a photo but never shared it online. There are more pretty places to show.

Coffee talk

Months after,while having a coffee at Kasia's mum...I cannot recall how we got to the subject, but it was about this street in Warsaw downtown. Ulica Kubusia Puchatka actually is Polish for Winnie the Pooh street. It took me a while to realize that, I just thought it was only that sign.

Newspaper competition

The story behind it...Imagine a post war Warsaw, growing very fast after almost being bombed completely during the ww2. 

I envision this office of the Warsaw infrastructure department, the city growing so fast as Varsovians worked their socks off to rebuild the city. They were just out of street names, their brains were just fried. Then one of them came up with the brilliant idea of letting Warsaw inhabitants proposing a street name.

So here we go. 

1956, newspaper competition. We have a winnerrr. Reality might be slightly different, but I like this version. 

Winnie the Pooh street 😁